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Every Octolens plan includes a monthly mention quota. Once you’ve used your quota, new mentions are paused until the next billing cycle. Understanding how mentions work will help you get the most out of your plan.

What counts toward your limit

Both relevant and irrelevant mentions count against your monthly mention limit. Every post that matches your keyword is counted, regardless of whether the AI marks it as relevant or irrelevant. This is why it’s important to set up your keywords carefully — broad or noisy keywords will use up your quota faster.

What happens when you run out

When you hit your monthly mention limit, new mentions are paused. You have two options:
  • Turn on flex mentions — Go to Plans & Billing in your settings and enable flex mentions. This gives you usage-based mentions beyond your plan’s quota, so you never miss a mention. No plan upgrade needed.
  • Upgrade your plan — Switch to a higher plan with a larger monthly quota at Plans & Billing.

How mention limits work

When you first sign up and choose keywords during onboarding, Octolens goes as far back as 7 days and finds up to 100 posts per platform. For any new keywords you add after onboarding, we also go back 7 days but find up to 10 posts per platform. Each post that matches your keyword counts as one mention toward your monthly quota.

Why am I not getting mentions?

If you’re not seeing any mentions—or fewer than expected—it’s almost always due to keyword setup. Here are the most common issues to check:

1. Incorrect use of include terms in advanced settings

This is the most frequent cause. If you’re using include terms, read this section carefully. Important: If you add include terms, Octolens only searches for mentions where your primary keyword appears together with the additional terms. It does not look for the primary keyword alone. Common pitfalls:
  • ALL OF instead of ANY OF: For ALL OF, all additional terms must appear alongside your primary keyword. This is very strict and usually works best with just one extra term.
  • Exact matches only: All additional terms must match the post content exactly.
  • Avoid using quotation marks — e.g., writing "AI" will look for the exact text with quotes included.
  • Use commas to separate terms — e.g., ai, AI, artificial intelligence
  • Don’t repeat your main keyword in the additional terms. That would require the term to appear multiple times in the same post.
  • Avoid overly broad primary keywords (e.g., “Brand,” “Hiring,” “Strategy”) when using AND/OR. Due to API limitations, we may miss posts that combine these with additional terms. Use more targeted keywords instead.

2. You’ve reached your monthly mention limit

If you’ve hit your monthly quota, new mentions will be paused. Turn on flex mentions in Plans & Billing for usage-based overflow, or upgrade your plan.

3. Keyword spelling or formatting errors

Double-check your keywords for typos, accidental quotation marks, or special characters.

4. Case sensitivity is turned on

If Case Sensitive is enabled in your keyword settings, only exact-case matches will be shown. Unless you’re monitoring something case-specific (like a brand acronym), we recommend keeping this off to catch more results.

5. Broad keywords may hit platform/API limits

Some social platforms and APIs have volume limits that prevent us from returning every result when a keyword is too broad. Try narrowing your keyword (e.g., “brand tracking tool” instead of just “brand”) to get more relevant and consistent results. See Tracked Platforms for platform-specific limitations.
We’re happy to review your keywords and settings. Email hi@octolens.com or write in the in-app chat.You can also book a 15-minute call with Charlotte here and we can do it together!